I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of conflict in fiction. About violence and antagonists and the role of villains.
With Martin Luther King Jr. Day upon us I’ve been musing about nonviolence, and how infrequently the speculative fiction I read finds a way for good to triumph over evil without a battle, whether it be waged by vast armies or only a handful of key players.
This is something I think about when planning my own novels. Will the last battle be a battle? Or is there a different way to resolve the inequities of the worlds I create?
Now don’t get me wrong—I love a good fight scene. There’s something cathartic reading about (or watching) a big over-the-top battle. Witnessing a group of people hashing things out in a reasonable, equitable manner just isn’t quite the same. Can it be compelling and dramatic, sure, but only if the scene contains what all good scenes, and stories, need:
Conflict.
And yet, when building conflict into my own work, I need to dig deep. Often, when a new idea pops into my head, it revolves around the hero—my protagonist. Sometimes my early thoughts contain world building elements—a style of magic, a location, a group of people—but usually the main character comes first, and the idea takes off from there.
The story builds, scenes develop, and then I’m thinking about the protagonist’s internal arc, plotting the changes they need to make and how they will get there, and the story is on its way to becoming more and more fully fleshed out. But something is always missing, at least at first.
And that missing piece is the antagonist.
I’ll have vague notions of the “bad guy”, either as a person, or an antagonistic force, like a storm, or magical blight, or even the hero’s own inner demons. I’ll have added conflict in small ways, between the various characters, usually. But I spend too much of my early imaginings focused on the protagonist. And it’s this narrow-minded way of thinking that’s gotten me in trouble time and time again as I get into the deeper nuances of my plot.
I blame it on my pacifistic nature. In my personal life, I avoid conflict as much as possible, so it’s not really a surprise that I shy away from it when writing.
Recently, I had an epiphany. It’s one of those moments of realization that’s really quite obvious in hindsight, but it’s completely changed the way I plot stories: what is the antagonist, but the hero of their own story?
Right, we’ve all heard that before. Like I said, not such a revelation.
But as I put so much loving care into my heroes’ plot arcs, it’s this notion that drives me to put as much care into my villains’. For the best heroes are those who aren’t perfect, who have faults and make mistakes. Who are relatable. Human.
And we can say the same for villains. What is more compelling, reading about a villain that is so evil that they have absolutely no redeeming qualities, or the ones that are relatable? That you like, even root for? After all, I tell my kids that there are no bad people, just people who do bad things. Shouldn’t the same be true in fiction?
Movies with villains as the main character are super popular right now. Besides some amazing wardrobes, it’s satisfying to see people who’ve made bad choices find redemption. A little hope for us all, don’t you think?
And while I still love a story where good triumphs over evil (it satisfies my idealistic nature) I find myself more drawn to stories where the conflict is not so dualistic. Where figuring out what’s right is hard. And who’s bad is even harder.
So the next time an idea pops into my head, I’m going to let it sit there for a while, waiting for its missing piece to come along and shake things up.